Me vs. Me

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"TWO", 2006, 40 x 40", ceramic, earth, wood

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This is a favorite piece of art. Â There are two small ceramic balls inside each square of the grid I placed over the whole surface. Â The balls are all at varying distances from one another. Â When I made this I was thinking about relationships with significant others but today it makes me think of how I relate to myself.

See how the tension changes inside each square according to how close or how far away from one another the balls are?

It’s like during a day how we feel good about ourselves, Â how we think: Â “cool…this is going well and I’m on a roll here..”, Â then you open a bill and you distance yourself from yourself only to go out in the world to do an errand and someone opens the door for you with a genuinely kind and heartful smile and life is different once again.

I sense that the suffering the Buddha talks about has to do with this very thing: Â that we have an erratic relationship with ourselves, Â we are not trustable in being rigorous about keeping our consciousness like a river; Â softly easing around the boulders in the way while surrendered to the movement. Â Not fighting it, Â not loving it, Â not telling someone about it to make ourselves feel good, Â not hiding from it…. Â JUST BEING IT.